Mr. Cutlets Weighs In on the At-Home Butchery Craze

March 23, 2010

With the rock star butcher backlash looming, at-home butchery is the next step in this culinary climate that favors DIY and nose-to-tail cooking. In his Time column, Josh Ozersky takes a look at the trend of hacking up one’s meat in the comfort of one’s own home:

“First of all, let’s be honest, they get to feel superior to everybody else: home butchers get unbeatable food cred… There’s also the macho element, which appeals to today’s growing numbers of emasculated males, fuming passively over their lost manhood, as in one immortal Super Bowl ad: ‘I will separate the recycling … I will carry your lip balm … I will watch your vampire TV shows with you.’ These ‘omega males,’ as a withering Slate article calls them, are the ideal recruits for home butchery, through which any milquetoast can transform into a Grizzly Adams with a single blow of the cleaver.”

But really, concludes Ozersky, butchering one’s own meat is just freaking cool.